How to Backup MacOS to Synology NAS using Time Machine (easy)

[@Canadian_Living_in_Mexico]

nice and simple tutorial. I setup TM on the NAS and I was able to clean up my workspace by removing two USB units that I was using for TM Backup. I am using my Synology NAS more and more with every SpaceRex video that I watch. Thank you.

[@ericp6890]

Thank you SpaceRex. The detailed and concise explanation from this video covers every single aspect of the Synology manual. Furthermore, the video is up to date as of early 2024.

[@jonnewton2165]

Excellent walkthrough. I would have missed some things without this video. Concise, effective

[@mywhitenoise_]

I've been wanting to build a NAS for years, finally did it. Your guides have made set up a breeze, thank you!

[@jacopo8182]

Thanks for the tutorial. It would be great to see even the next step about how to use the backup to restore your Mac

[@brianhansen6906]

Great easy to understand tutorial. Thank you! I made the jump to a MacBook Air today and was happy to get my timemachine backup set up to my DS920+. Your videos are a life saver.

[@tornadotj2059]

Worked like a champ. I'm using a Mac again for the first time since System 6. I also set up Active Backup for Business, but after I see Time Machine work for a while I may remove it. Time Machine is going to be far more intuitive for my wife to use than the ABB. And yeah, ABB was a pretty lengthy install.

[@Squatle]

Rock solid. Your videos are already helping me with my NAS more than anyone else. Thank you, your work is much appreciated

[@mrafayaleem]

Your tutorials are excellent! Thanks for publishing these!

[@Sleepingseamonkey]

That third check box under SMB advanced settings became unchecked when I updated DSM in July (@7:50). Thanks for the detailed instructions!

[@Steve_Flack]

Thank you for the video. Always wanted to get the Mac backups onto the NAS. Easy and clear steps to follow.

[@orional1977]

Thanks. Much better guide than the one I used a few months ago.

[@robb7370]

thanks Will, had a nightmare with active backup for business after getting a new Mac, somehow it already new previous settings for AB4B even though I set the MacBook up as a new machine, it failed to connect after around 5 hours I decided to take this route which I also couldn't get working but with your video was simple thank you.

[@KnotsUntied]

✔ Super helpful...I managed to do everything wrong when first setting up my TM on my DS1621+ so wiped it clean, reinstalled the DSM from scratch and followed along! Thanks so much. Note that once in the macOS setup for Time Machine, the dialogs have changed a little (in Sequoia, at least) but they're basically the same.

[@dirkziegler9580]

In theory this should work. In practice it stopps working after several months of using TM. I don't know why, but I have to setup TM from scratch frequently to keep it working. Currently the TM-backup is that slow, that it would take weeks to get it completely done - in my home network! I wish TM would work better because it is an essential part of my backupstratgey.

[@roulette6]

Thanks for this tutorial. I overlooked quite a few of the SMB settings when I first tried to make this work (prior to seeing your video).

[@phuket2753]

This was great, thank you. Good to have the walk-through. Makes you feel confident in the backup being there.

[@jonasandero4124]

Thanks for a great guide, you saved me a lot of time!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks!

[@myronmancan]

Thank you. I setup Time machine like a billion years ago and it stopped worked, and my computer hard drive filled up. This really, really helped me. I could not complete this work and protect my production computer berfore your video.

[@TDHobbies]

Thank you for this, I just got my first MacBook and this was extremely helpful, I also was not aware of the snapshots ability.

[@deanbrandon3615]

This is fantastic! Finally, I see how to set up the NAS folders, etc. so Time Machine can see the NAS for backup. Thank You. Why do they make it so difficult? I know there are so many features Synology has, but I don't need to actually fly the 747, I just want to recline the seat...

[@chellosoccer]

Thank you Sir!!! You have been a life saver. Great easy to follow videos.

[@AaAa-je5eo]

How to do "X" on a NAS? There's a SpaceRex video for that. 🦖 Thanks Will, seriously awesome content and production on all of your stuff. This channel is going to explode🚀

[@jem8794]

Great video Will. Thank you so much for educating me and thousands of viewers.

[@2kings3queens]

Hey Will, Just changed retention settings on snapshots for TM & was able to reclaim some storage space, thank you for the information !!!

[@GuessterS]

Thank you. Superb teaching skills. Unmatched. Keep up the great work

[@MichaelStrong0112]

I've set up Time Machine on my Synology a few times in different ways, including how you teach here. It starts out working well. Within a few weeks, I began having serious problems on my Mac, which traced back to my Synology Time Machine setup. I'm not interested in trying anymore. Just sticking with an external SSD. If I want to back that up on Synology, then I can do that.

[@guptatushar]

Thanks, Will for this great video. It helped me to set up my TimeMachine backup properly.

[@ccbphoto]

Thanks!

[@pascalgodichef6609]

Thanks a lot!!! It works perfectly. Without this video, I would have wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to configure the NAS.

[@hmd7oceans]

Wow, absolutely perfect tutorial. Thank you so much!

[@WayneNaylor25]

Will thank you for a excellent tutorial. I wanted to back up my wife's MacBook Pro using a network drive for a long time. This tutorial helped me tremendously. P.S. I watch your KZbin videos all the time.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you like it man!

[@GuinnessSquirrel]

Very well explained. Simple to understand. Thank you.

[@beydoin]

Amazing walk thru! Thank you Sir

[@aottke]

EDIT: Just saw your request for forum questions instead of KZbin comments in another video. Headed over there, but leaving this in case someone else had the same issue and solved it somehow. 🙂 So, I can't get external drives to back up to our DS1821+ for some reason. The local computer backs up fine, but even though the external drive is not in the exclusion list, it does not add it in the backup when it runs. Just acts as though there's nothing there and finishes the backup successfully without that drive. It's formatted HFS+, but no clue why it won't back up to the Synology. On another similar setup for a friend, same thing. It also won't see her other APFS and one other HFS+ drive we're trying to get to back up to her DS1522+. This happened on past DSM 7.1 installs and also on the latest DSM 7.2 Update 3, for what it's worth. All settings are set up just as in this video. All drives are confirmed not to be in the exclusion lists. Any suggestions? (Separately, the only other issues we've had were the highly googled Synology+TM issues once backing up more than one Mac where we need to manually kill an SMB connection through DSM and retry a TM backup to get it to work. And that solves our problems there. But still no external drives being backed up).

[@Argleeb]

Love this tutorial! I’ve been backing up from iMac using TM writing to a Synology NAS for a good couple of years. We recently started running out of space on the iMac due to photos. Got a very cool Samsung 4TB T7 Shield and moved iMac’s Photos to it to get all my space back. I’m using only 400GB on the iMac and 600GB on the T7 (which is always connected). Now, TM has run out of space. Is TM trying to back up all 4TB on the T7 in spite of the fact that I’m using only 600GB on it? Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

[@viviansprivatekitchen1437]

Thank you for this, it was super helpful. I noticed that in your file services advanced settings you had Disable set for Transport encryption mode and Enable server signing but by default mine came up as client defined and Disable SMB1 signing on. Is it necessary to set to disable for both?

[@johnperkowski6357]

@SpaceRexWill, Thank you. I was able to implement everything except for "snapshots." That part had me lost. Is Snapshot something on the Synology or something in Time Machine or something else? How do I get to Snapshot and configure the settings as you recommend?

[@robertlord7911]

Thanks I've been looking for this and it was spot on! Much obliged. Question: if one has a USB drive attach to the NAS as a secondary TM backup is set up similar?

[@xvir777]

Great tutorial! Very detailed!

[@trashdumpster]

OMG! You made setting up TM with SMB on Synology so simple. Thank you! I did notice the version of DSM 7.2.2-72806 Update 2 has a "Enable SMB3 directory leasing" checkbox. I checked the checkbox to enable SMB3. Seems to work. But if you reply just curious... Should it be checked?

[@TheTheatreOfCoD]

Great video! I've fully set up my NAS with the help of your great content. I do have a question though, would you recommend backing up Time Machine shared folder via Hyper Backup? Thanks

[@mariomotosicky]

Is it possible to set up quota for example 1TB storage but it will keeps only the newst files? Ive been dealing with problem where my quota filled up and mac stopped backuping because of quota. I would like to keep it for 1TB and automatically deleting and updating files. Thank you!

[@scottlawrence6396]

FYI - I had an issue whereby when timemachine started backing up then all other connections to share folders would be ejected.... took me a long time to figure out what was going on but finally managed to notice that in the File Services -> SMB Settings -> Advanced Settings -> Others the option for Disable Multiple Connections from the same IP address needed to be de-selected. Not sure if that is a default setting or I put in on at some point in the past. Everything appears to be working well now.

[@a_mouse6858]

This is such a simple and elegant solution to backup of macs (especially for laptops and and/or users with bad backup habits!). But can you comment on how reliable writing to a sparsebundle is with mesh WiFi? I've had mixed results with this in the past, and wonder if the data integrity protection of the Synology SMB server makes it more viable now?

[@MrMilio]

Hey Will, thanks for you awesome videos! I have now a spare single HDD NAS on hand and wanted to make it an external backup NAS (at the home of my parents). Would be awesome if you make a video on it.

[@CryptoDC-]

Awesome video mate

[@rurimaja]

This was great. Only thing I couldn't follow was the snapshots settings; can't find/figure out how to do that.

[@jonnyamos4547]

Thank you so so so much for this video! Amazing! I really want to say a special thanks!

[@lpallen98]

Concerning the 'user' you give permissions to for the shared folder. I don't see 'me' listed there, only the 'admin' user I intiatialy created & use to log into the Synology. So, should I create a user that 'matches' my computer user on my MBP, which in this case is me? Also exactly how should I configure that user? (which is me)... Thanks.

[@luisdiegosalas]

I don't know what is happening, but I follow your instructions exactly and I still get and issue with available space after a number of TM runs. It is as if it can't delete older versions of files.

[@jakubduda]

I just configured it on MacoOS 14 Sonoma beta, and now you can set storage limit for TM backup (when creating task on a Mac). But from what I can see is that you can't change it after the job is created.

[@gossamer88]

My sparsbundle cannot be opened (corrupt?). Is there a way to make the backup a .backupdb structure instead?

[@lpallen98]

In you last chapter you talk about snapshots. How to you ge to that window? You don't say where you can find it. Thank you.

[@jean-francois_dion]

The only way to access and finish the configuration of Time Machine with the drive credential is to use the New Password App in MacOS 15. The keyboard is not accessible. Weird Bug. But create a user and password in the App and your done. I just did it! Thanks for the other info!

[@waw4]

Hi Will! 2 questions- Q1. What's the purpose of the TM snapshots & how much storage will they take up? Q2. Will TM send a notification when it's used up all the space alloted or will it just keep chugging away, deleting the oldest backups?

[@SpaceRexWill]

So TM snapshots I setup as a ransomeware preventative. Having only a couple will take up a very small amount of space

[@SpaceRexWill]

Time Machine will just delete old versions once its out of space, but before that it will keep everything. I don’t think MacOS will tell you

[@ruwn561]

@@SpaceRexWill it does tell you it’s running low on space, also it tells you if it hasn’t backed up to that disk in x days or hours etc.

[@gugy68]

I am highly considering leaving behind my DS920+. For the second time in 6 months I lose my connection to my Mac and I can't back up. Such a weird thing because I still can connect to the other volumes but not the TM one. Contacting Synology is a headache and they usually can't solve the issue. If you someday can create a video with troubleshooting , that would be awesome. Great channel! @@SpaceRexWill

[@MsTessG]

Very helpful and easy to follow. Thanks! 🎉

[@thecanyonsisters]

Hello ! Thank you very much for the explanation, it was perfectly clear to me. I have started it and it recognizes all the disks and folders without problem. The only problem is that I started TM yesterday afternoon at 4:50 pm and now it is 8:44 am and it has not even reached 50%...is it normal that it is this slow??? It is a macbook air M2 2023 SD 256 gb,on a DS223J, 2 2TB disks Raid 1. . Thank you.

[@zebostoneleigh]

The first pass of Time Machine is always significantly slowly than following passes. And yes, the first pass could easily take that long...

[@hmd7oceans]

Hi I couldn't find the snapshot option on the Synology NAS, how did you get to it? Thanks!

[@MediSpring]

Is there any solution putting backups into a cloud? I know, that iCloud doesn't work for macOS. But does anybody know a backup-storage option in the internet? thanks

[@BartekWoszczynski]

Hello! Thank you so much for this great tutorial! I followed all of the steps (I believe) however for the pas 24h it just shows "connecting to the back up disc". Do you have any ideas what I could have done wrong?

[@whya2ndaccount]

That makes sense however under OS 10.11.6 The SMB share is not available as a drive location in Time Machine option. Any thoughts?

[@mohammadirfan8910]

Many thanks for your all amazing Videos... I have NAS Storage, RAID 5 configured with 1 volume, Right now data is 43% only but issue is after 10 or 15 days storage will be reaching to 100%, then it will be auto refresh to 43%, My concern is... Between the process getting WARNING ERROR. Please suggest me how fix it. Don't want to reach 100% Unnecessary

[@StudioPractice]

Great video! Thank you very much. I guess I’m not using Btrfs, because I have no ability to set folder quota. Do you have any suggestions on any way to keep Time Machine from swallowing my disk?

[@cushieaudio]

G'day, I have been having nas issues since at least 2015 across 3 apple time capsules and now my synology I got a few years back. everyone keeps blaming each other (error 19 included) I think I am closing in on the prob it’s my smb connection. i follwed your great tut to a T and mine is set up just like yours. the only dif I can see is the 5 machines backing up are all in the one folder. I constantly have to start again when I either get error 19 or it taking so long to do it's normal back up it's hard to finish a single one in a day, and then it just gives up. I have unresolved tickets with apple. How do you access the snapshots to check? thanks!

[@markzhangMA261]

I recently had the same issue after backing up my Mac to Synology for over a year now. I tried to search for solutions but the only (non-ideal)solution I found was to forget the backup destination in Time Machine settings, then re-add the location, and choose to "erase existing backups" (rather than "use existing backups").

[@cushieaudio]

Yeah, nothing works, its corrupt. I have been opening tickets with  since 2015. they dont care

[@khi787ghid]

Thank you, Will! Why do you enable checksums and how do you think they affect the performance of already very slow Time Machine backups? I'm assuming that Time Machine effectively edits small portions of the internal sparsebundle files, and thus btrfs will need to often recalculate the checksums. The official DSM manual is silent about this though. This is what I got from their support though: if you want to configure the Time Machine folder, you can enable the option of "Enable data checksum for advanced data integrity" but it is not necessary, I personally think you don't need to enable it.

[@JohnCLin-yo9yx]

Thanks SpaceRex! I used DSM to set a size for my TM shared folder on my Synology. When I went to direct Time Machine to back up to that folder, after the question about encrypting backup, I was asked for a "Disk Usage Limit" (either none or custom). Is that different than my setting a size of the TM shared folder? How should I answer that question? (I'm using Sonoma 14.3)

[@theruckman]

Great info until the last "snapshot" part, my NAS told me "no LUNs" and "create a LUN" -any help on this?

[@jeffjsmith]

That was a BIG help - thanks so much!

[@herokme0]

Is there a downside to using time machine to backup macos AND using active backup for business to backup macos? besides it just taking up more space? i cant decide which one i want to use

[@vacowboy75]

Well done. Pretty simple. Thanks.

[@organismseven3700]

I did not get the option to "Enable shared folder quota". That whole dialog window does not appear. Do you only get this option if you are using the Btrfs file format? Info: DS214play DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 5

[@petercdejong]

Got it working with smb now. Thanks!

[@jigsound]

Have you got experience with Carbon Copy Cloner? I'm using both it and Time Machine to back up the boot disk image and select folders and drive content respectively. - Eero

[@nakcarikayu]

ive just updated my mac to sonoma and had to upgrade my CCC too. Currently doing a bit of research on best practices for using ccc on a nas. Just got the DS224+ after using DS212 and hoping to do all my cloning and TM backups straight to the NAS. How's CCC on nas working for you so far? Any gotcha's i should take note of?

[@reviews2you]

Have you had an issue when your shared Time Machine folder filled up that it would no longer back up to it? I've had this where instead of deleting old backups as it should it just says not enough space and won't back up. My main Mac has about 500GB of used space and I assigned a shared folder to it (and it alone) with around 2.5TB. I had recycle bin shut off (that's important). Once the folder was all but full I just got error messages and time machine wouldn't backup. I had to blast years worth of backups and start over, this has happened over a few macs over the years and Synology is never helpful with this issue. They blame apple and apple can't help with network backups. So I'm doing this again but no way to know if the issue has been resolved until the folder becomes full, makes it super sucky to rely on. Also, I know in mac OS 14.3 you can limit the size of your time machine backup from time machine settings. So if I have a 10TB usb drive now time machine will ask if I want to allocate all 10TB to it. I wonder if it gives this same option with the network drive? If so it may be wise to go back to using sinology's time machine option where all macs share one folder.

[@Josh-od6oc]

Do you need a new shared folder for each user on 1 computer? I know you do for each computer.

[@HighRockmike]

Hi Will, if the TimeMachine backup folders are created within the main volume, and the main volume has snapshots, do the Time Machine backup folders need separate snapshots?

[@고우리-d8n]

Thank you sooooo much!! That war really helpful!!!

[@Darieee]

amazingly usefull stuff - thanks 🔥

[@natalielaspisa4597]

This is super helpful! What happens if your laptop is telling you it could not back up “Macintosh HD” because it is nearly full. Is there a way around this?

[@Bmeri3]

Nice and to the point. Thanks!

[@kevinz8867]

Thanks for the very helpful video, Will! TLDR: turned on AFP and old MBP saw the TM drive I created. Are there any long term affects of having AFP on? should I toggle it on and off to backup wife's MBP? I have two 2017 iMacs and they had no issues configuring with SMB per your tutorial and I got them going, thanks! I followed along as I am a total noob on this, I know nothing so I followed to the T. So when you said not to use AFP I was like "OK, but I don't know anything about it or why won't use..." Then I went to setup my wife's ooold MBP. It's running 10.11.6 El Capitan. I couldn't get your steps to work when trying to add the TM-MBP on her end of the setup. I figured out her mac is using AFP, so I tried enabling that on the DSM and there were the drives. Her MBP is only 250GB and she HARDLY uses it. It's mostly her school files (she's a teacher). Should I just toggle AFP on and off to manually run backups or let it do it's thing?

[@iSerce]

Hey - Don't seem to have Snapshot Replication on my Synology DS216Play - Runniing Software 7.1.1

[@NoBrassLeftBehind]

I can access every folder in my Synology NAS no problem it instantly shows up in my location section of finder but I can't get the Time Machine shared folder to mount as easily as you do. I can open that folder through finder but Time Machine is having a hell of a time mounting it and initiating even the first backup. please help!

[@elijahgavrilov1686]

And what if I have several users on a mac? Does data of all users backed up?

[@Papparazziby]

It looks like SMB durable handles are disabled when the Synology Drive Server installs, it broke my Time Machine backups. Thanks for the tutorial!!!

[@cesaralarcon2235]

Gracias por la información. Saludos desde Ciudad de México.

[@AlexKingCreative]

So helpful dude. Awesome.

[@jukimax]

Thanks again from awesome tutorial!

[@notreallyme425]

When are we going to get Active Backup for Business support for Mac?

[@SpaceRexWill]

It is supported, but as of right now I still recommend Time Machine

[@faroukvisram]

What’s the best way to backup iPhone or iPad? Synology photos backs up pictures it what about everything else?

[@DigiDriftZone]

If you're strictly on Mac and you're using timemachine, seems Synology may be a bit overkill? - I'm thinking a raspberry pi with an external 2 bay caddy (raid1) and you get basically the same, or am I missing something?

[@akram1402]

Thank you, is it possible to backup iphones to nas?

[@mistermacpodcast]

Can I backup multiple computers to one Shared TM folder? (Assuming I make the folder size limit big enough)? Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

You can, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It tends to work better with just one to one because of folder limitations

[@mistermacpodcast]

@@SpaceRexWill The limitations you're referring to are the size limitations you set during the folder creation?

[@03Jan09]

Question: If a Time Machine backup is no longer needed, do we just right-click delete the file in File Station?

[@03Jan09]

Done

[@byrd203]

it does corrupt itself after several years of use I just had my moms l;laptop that refused to backup said backup error it was on an older network drive too but I moved that to a Synology from macos extended on old system to APFS SMB backup on the nas it backed up just fine

[@DrTarekahmad]

Thanks for the perfect guide

[@tomtommes1050]

Hi Will, thx a lot for the tutorial! Unfortunate I can't run a Time Machine backup from outside (connected via VPN), because Time Machine can't find the NAS. What I'm doing wrong here?

[@brandon5411]

Recently setup my Synology 1522+ and have it attached to my M4 Mac mini. I keep having issues with it randomly disconnecting, usually after the display has locked. Have you ever encountered this and have any advice?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Turn off device sleep

[@brandon5411]

@ it’s off, just locking the screen. Do you use SMB?

[@HoekNoot]

Hello Will you use Safari in the video. May I ask how you get the little windows of website in Safari ? You have your NAS in big window and on the left I see KZbin your forum in little box. Is this an extension ?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Those are built into safari! Called pined tabs. Really easy you just drag a tab to the left and it uses it

[@HoekNoot]

@@SpaceRexWill great thx for reply. Love to see your videos